Exploring the alternatives

Coloured by corruption, nepotism, red tapism and blatant misuse of power, ‘politics’ has become a shady pedestrian expression off late. But are there any alternatives to this hackneyed term? Political commentator and psephologist Yogendra Yadav has an interesting prelude to offer in this context. According to him, alternatives with respect to policy can be classified into three broad categories namely: 

·        Alternatives to politics

·        Political Alternatives

·        Alternate politics

Simply put, politics is the twilight terrain where hope and despair live in an uneasy truce. Politics is the only transformation that can bring alignment in ideological bandwidth of millions of lives associated with it. Alternatives to politics will mean alternative to democracy. Democracies all over the world have been dismantled through vocabulary of this kind. But let not the contempt for alternates to politics camouflage the sorry state that Indian politics is plagued with. Politics in our country has been reduced to contesting elections, casting votes and agitation. The need of the hour is to explore alternatives in politics.

 Political alternatives on the other hand signify oscillations within the political establishment. This practice is religiously complied by prostitutes who masquerade as leaders with questionable ideological chastity who seem to be in bed with every other political establishment that pampers them with money and power positions.

However, it is alternative politics that offers genuine differentiation. Alternative politics is more than just denial of corruption, lal battis and scams and scandals. It is reimagining politics in the wider sense of the word. For a long lasting engagement between people and power, the very idea of politics has to be revisited. Politics has to become the amalgamation of aesthetic culture, language, beauty, lifestyle and art. For long it has been perceived as a monologue, but the time is ripe to change it into a forum for ‘public’ discourse. But how can this transformation come about without reorganising political establishments?

The first step in restructuring political parties will have to come through gigantic changes in their ideologies and source of income. Now, let us reason why there is an urgent need to envision a new organisational culture with respect to these two principles. The root cause of nepotism and crony capitalism is the funding of these organisations. Even with ample checks by the election commission in place, candidates spend a fortune in election campaigns with the hope of recovering the money once they are in positions of power. So instead of being accountable to the electorate who voted for them, they owe allegiance to the corporate biggies who sponsored them. The only pragmatic solution to this is that citizens should start funding these political parties in a bid to ensure accountability in the public domain.

Coming to the issue of ideological moderation, political parties have recently claimed ownership of national leaders including Nehru, Gandhi and Patel. These national leaders have become a metaphor for a scathing political war between our two leading parties. But what these political parties fail to understand is that these leaders are a national treasure and cannot be appropriated upon by any political entity. To commemorate the 125^th birth anniversary of India’s first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, what ensued was a searing war of words between the BJP and the Congress. While both political behemoths seem to be on a leader shopping spree, it is worth asking that should national leaders be the context of attacking political opponents? It is also interesting to note that the Congress party who claims to own Nehru does not adhere to his own ideologies. Known for his eclectic charm, snaring wit and his subtle sense of humor, Nehru could largely be held responsible for many policy failures that India is crippled with. But he was one of the few leaders who had the audacity to mock himself and laugh over it. There is one particular incident that sheds light on this aspect of his personality and that it is one of the yardsticks by which alternative politics can be judged.

In November 1937, in Calcutta based highly respected magazine Modern Review, appeared an anonymous article on Nehru arguing that men like him are ‘dangerous’ and ‘potential dictators’. “He had gone like some triumphant Caesar, leaving a trail of glory and legend behind him... He calls himself a democrat and a socialist but a little twist and he might turn into a dictator...His conceit is already formidable and it must be checked. We want no Caesars”, said the article. It soon became known that the author of this denunciatory article was none other than Jawaharlal Nehru.  These unnecessary risks and the ability to look over himself made him the apple of people’s eyes and earned him critical appreciation worldwide. India today needs leaders of his stature whose ideologies will be aligned with the idea of India and who will have the temerity to look beyond their stature and bring about a revolution on how politics is perceived today.

But the counter argument to this can be that, is it necessary for a political organisation to subscribe to the 20^th century ideologies like Marxism or communism or socialism? Like our mannerisms, shouldn’t ideologies evolve with time? Why do we need to adhere to one of them or seek refuge in the policies of our national leaders? It is time to think afresh, it is time to break free from the shackles of obsolete ideologies, it is time to unlearn and it is time to explore the new world of alternative politics.